Nutrition Education in the Digital Age

So far our intern blog has showcased a handful of experiences my fellow interns have had – many of them in a clinical setting. But of our 10-month long internship, the UMD College Park dietetic interns spend two-thirds of it outside of a hospital setting. The rest of our time is spent rotating through food service, community and technology sites. 

My rotation partner, Valerie, and me at CNPP

My clinical rotations do not start until early 2016. I’ve spent the past three months in six different rotations. So far I’ve done five weeks at the USDA Center for Nutrition Policy & Promotion (CNPP), three weeks at the International Food Information Council (IFIC), one week at Maryland’s Food Supplement Nutrition Education (FSNE) program, three weeks at UMD Dining Services and this week doing a sustainability rotation on the UMD campus. Throughout these very different rotations, there is one thing I’ve done a lot – WRITE.

Each rotation I’ve been through has required me to produce written content for a variety of audiences. At CNPP and FSNE, the content needed to be written to reach low-literacy readers, while content for IFIC has targeted a more science-minded audience. At Dining Services, I developed content for two very different audiences – undergraduate students and the kitchen staff.

Our internship has a focus on “information technology” but what that really means is that we use the tools that newer technologies provide in order to communicate nutrition information with a broad reach. For example, we write blog posts, website content, and compose Facebook and Twitter messages. Each platform offers us a means of spreading accurate nutrition content to a larger audience than the more traditional one-on-one patient to dietitian relationship.

In addition to what you’ve seen on the blog, here are a few other examples of what has been written by our intern class for a variety of platforms (look for our names near the bottom of several):

• Web copy for the Fall-seasonal page on ChooseMyPlate.gov
• 9 Best Sources of Protein post for Lifehack.org
• Facebook post for Maryland FSNE (SNAP-ed)
• Tweet for @MyPlate
• Prenatal Nutrition 101 post for FoodInsight.org
• Nutrition tips for the UMD Dining website 

If you’re applying for an internship this upcoming February, and you want to develop and exercise your nutrition communications skills – this program could be a great fit!

In fact, you can learn more about our program by visiting an open house. If you can’t make it in-person or to a live online open house, soon a recorded open house will be available to view on the Dietetic Internship webpage. You can also get in touch with any of the current interns – we would be happy to answer any questions you may have about the program!